LETTERS
letters to the editor
mortgagestrategy welcomes readers’ letters intended for publication.
Letters should be sent to: The Editor, Mortgage Strategy, 50 Poland Street, London
W1F 7AX. Letters can also be emailed to mortgage.strategy@centaur.co.uk
it
16
✱ STAR LETTER
Landlords as well as
tenants need protection
I was intrigued by the Conservative Party’s recent call for
greater protection for tenants. If tenants don’t pay rent it is
only after they fall two months into arrears that landlords
can serve a Section 8 notice for them to leave. If they don’t
respond, we can go for a possession claim online and
obtain a court date usually within three to four weeks.
But 90% of the time these tenants don’t turn up because
they cannot defend their non-payment. If and when the
landlord wins possession, they must give 15 days’ notice
to obtain possession. If that fails they can apply for a
warrant to get the court bailiffs to
‘‘
Entrepreneurship
is not encouraged
in Britain. Let’s
tie up landlords
because they
can afford to pay
for costs but
help tenants
when they take
the biscuit
get the tenants out.
Has Britain gone mad? We’ve
got politicians worrying about
tenants just because they feel
they need help. What about the
landlords who pay interest to
lenders, who pay builders and
plumbers to maintain properties
and who pay letting agents to
find tenants? They also pay
brokers who earn a living out of
processing buy-to-let loans.
Entrepreneurship is not
encouraged in Britain. Let’s tie
up landlords because they can
afford to pay for costs but help
tenants when they take the biscuit. I am not saying tenants
should have no protection but let’s redress the balance.
Landlords make money for themselves while they create
employment and help make the financial wheels go round.
They need tenants who pay rent but landlords should have
the same rights as tenants. Non-paying tenants should not
have more rights than law-abiding landlords.
We should spend more time looking at protecting those
trying to earn a living. Can you imagine what it feels like to
have to miss two months’ mortgage payments and risk
getting repossessed because your tenants refuse to pay?
STEVE LOK
BY EMAIL
Rent arrears can
cause problems for
buy-to-let landlords
I noted with interest Conservative
shadow housing minister Grant
Shapps’ call for greater protection
for tenants in a property
repossession situation. I wonder if
he understands one of the main
reasons for such repossessions.
Few landlords would miss
payments on their buy-to-let
mortgages while tenants are paying
rent. As a landlord with five
properties, the only situation in
which I may be forced to miss a
payment is when a tenant
continuously refuses to pay rent,
causing me serious cash flow
problems.
This situation is made worse by
the fact that existing protection
provided to tenants allows them to
abuse honest landlords.
Once a tenant has moved in they
can easily refuse to pay rent for no
justifiable reason and live in a
property rent-free for around five
months or so before the courts can
evict them.
Even one tenant doing this in
my small portfolio would cause
serious cash flow issues and place
my other four tenants at risk of
eviction by repossession due to
missed mortgage payments.
A more effective form of
protection would be enforced
notification of missed mortgage
payments by landlord to tenants
and a quicker eviction process for
reputable landlords with an up-todate
mortgage payment record,
particularly when there is no
justifiable reason for non-payment
of rent.
www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk
Greater protection for tenants
comes from protecting the cash
flow of reputable landlords from
unscrupulous tenants.
RICHARD CAUKILL
ABBEYDALE ESTATES
BY EMAIL
Seeing the funny
but not dodgy side
of DA brokers
I have never written to Mortgage
Strategy before although I have
been lucky enough to prop up the
bar at several of its award dinners.
But I was prompted to write
after almost suffering a coronary
laughing so much at Gerry
O’Brien’s comments in the article
headlined ‘Market ignores
distribution danger at its peril’
(Mortgage Strategy March 16).
OK, so the fact O’Brien runs a
network and is looking to increase
its distribution power has nothing
to do with him basically saying that
all directly authorised mortgage
brokers are bent and need a
network to keep them on the
straight and narrow?
I use three mortgage clubs and
none of them vetted me before
processing business through them.
But what I did have to do was
go through a thorough vetting
process by the Financial Services
Authority to become a DA broker in
the first place.
This included reference checks
from past employers, credit checks,
business planning and capital
adequacy proof – all things that the
clubs rely on to ensure we are
suitable for the business and the
fact that we are reading more about
MORTGAGE STRATEGY March 23, 2009
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